How to convert salary to hourly rate (with the formula)

The salary-to-hourly formula

The basic conversion is simple division:

Hourly rate = Annual salary ÷ (hours per week × weeks per year)

A ₹12,00,000 salary at 40 hours a week for 52 weeks is about ₹577 an hour. Same math works in dollars, euros, or any currency — the formula never changes, only the numbers.

The paid-leave wrinkle most people miss

The standard formula assumes 52 working weeks. But if you get paid leave, you work fewer weeks for the same salary, which means your hourly rate is higher than the naive number.

Use the weeks you actually work. Four weeks of annual leave means 48 weeks, not 52. The same ₹12,00,000 salary at 40 hours × 48 weeks is about ₹625 an hour — a meaningful difference when you are pricing a project.

That is exactly what the Salary to Hourly Rate Calculator handles. It defaults to 52 weeks and lets you dial in the real number.

Why freelancers should not use this number directly

Here is the part that costs freelancers money. A straight salary-to-hourly conversion is what your time is worth to you — but it is not what you should charge.

An employee costs an employer 1.3–1.5x their salary once benefits, taxes, and overhead are added. As a freelancer you carry all of that yourself: your own taxes, insurance, equipment, and the unbillable hours spent on admin and proposals. Charge your converted hourly rate and you are paying those costs out of your own pocket.

The honest approach is to start from the income you need — not the salary you used to have — and work back from billable hours. Our Freelancer Rate Calculator is built for exactly that: it turns your monthly income target into a floor rate based on the hours you can realistically bill.

Use the conversion, then sanity-check

The salary conversion is still useful. It gives you a benchmark for comparing a job offer against freelance work, or for checking whether a side project is worth your evenings.

Use the salary converter to get the benchmark, then run your real numbers through the freelancer rate calculator before you quote anyone. The gap between those two numbers is the gap between working for a salary and building a business.